Media top headlines October 11
In media news today, a CNN guest accuses the GOP of trying to 'dump anthrax in the water supply' over debt ceiling fight, McAuliffe gets pressed to define critical race theory and Biden turns his back on reporters and refuses to answer questions on September jobs report
Yet another essay in the New York Times from self-described Republicans calling for electing Democrats drew considerable derision Monday.
"We Are Republicans With a Plea: Elect Democrats in 2022," read the headline from a pair of disaffected Republicans.
"Rational Republicans are losing the G.O.P. civil war. And the only near-term way to battle pro-Trump extremists is for all of us to team up on key races and overarching political goals with our longtime political opponents: the Democratic Party," the essay stated.
Conservative critics wondered what the target audience for such an essay was and mocked the notion of left-wing Democrats wanting a good-faith alliance with conservatives opposed to Donald Trump.
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The Federalist writer Mollie Hemingway, responding to Tablet's Noam Blum, called a unified Republican Party a "threat to the left" and ripped "corrupt media" seeking to demoralize the party's base.
"I legitimately don't understand who the audience is for this genre of article," Blum wrote.
Miles Taylor, better known as the "Anonymous" Trump official who wrote in the Times about being part of a secret resistance inside the government, and former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman called on the left and center-right to form an alliance in their essay. Such pieces have been ubiquitous in left-leaning editorial and op-ed pages in recent years.
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The "Anonymous" essay penned by Taylor in 2018 stoked wild speculation in the press about which "senior" Trump official was actively working to thwart him. One CNN writer wondered if it was Vice President Mike Pence or even first lady Melania Trump, but Taylor outed himself in 2020 – Taylor was, at the time of his essay, the Department of Homeland Security's deputy chief of staff.
He lied on CNN in 2020 when asked by Anderson Cooper if he was "Anonymous," joined the network as a contributor, and then retained his contributorship even after he admitted to lying to Cooper on the air.
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Taylor and Whitman also received praise from the left for taking a principled stand against their party.
Such essays and columns have been commonplace since the Trump era began to dominate American politics. The New York Times served as the announcement page in 2019 for the Lincoln Project, the left-wing super PAC founded by disgruntled current and former Republicans working to elect Democrats.
"We are Republicans, and we want Trump defeated," said the headline for the guest essay by Steve Schmidt, Rick Wilson, George Conway and John Weaver.
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"Want to save the GOP, Republicans? Vote for every Democrat on this year’s ballot" and "Why this Never Trump ex-Republican will vote for almost any 2020 Democratic nominee" were the headlines for op-eds by frequent MSNBC guest Tom Nichols in 2018 and 2019, respectively.
"Here are 14 reasons I’ll vote for any Democrat over Trump," the Washington Post's Max Boot, a former Republican, wrote in 2019.
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